The TV show Murder She Wrote was originally conceived as a vehicle for Jean Stapleton. She turned down the role because, having just left All in the Family, she did not want to commit to another TV series. Doris Day also turned down the role before Angela Landsbury signed on.
Harold Ramis was one of the original cast of Second City TV, but left the show after a season to become a writer and director, best known for **Caddyshack, National Lampoon’s Vacation, **and Groundhog Day. He also wrote the screenplay for Ghostbusters, where he played Egon Spengler.
The University of Dallas in Irving, Texas (a Dallas suburb) has taken Groundhog Day as its official university holiday.
“Irving” was the boyfriend, and eventual husband, of the titular character of the comic strip “Cathy.”
The Boy Scouts of America is headquartered in Irving, Texas, a suburb of Dallas.
Irving was also the site of Texas Stadium, the Dallas Cowboys’ home from 1971 to 2008. The stadium’s most notable architectural feature was a hole in the roof, which allowed the elements to come into play during games while the fans were generally protected from the vagaries of weather.
The term “Hail Mary Pass” was made famous when it was used to describe a pass from Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach to receiver Drew Pearson in the 1975 playoff game against the Minnesota Vikings.
Drew Pearson was a famous muckraking newspaper columnist with his column “The Washington Merry-Go-Round,” which ran from 1931 to 1969.
Drew Pearson once stated in an interview that John F. Kennedy hadn’t written his Pulitzer-winning history Profiles in Courage, but retracted it after seeing JFK’s notes and reading a sworn statement from Theodore Sorensen, the senator’s aide and rumored ghostwriter.
Charles Sorensen, later a top executive of the Ford Motor Company, is credited with creating the first automotive assembly line in 1910, as a Ford manufacturing engineer, and later with developing the metal-pattern system for casting engine blocks.
Director and producer William Asher has been credited with being the “man who invented the sitcom,” having directed more than two dozen of the leading sitcoms, including I Love Lucy, from the 1950s through the 1970s.
William Asher created and produced the sitcom Bewitched, which starred his wife, Elizabeth Montgomery. The show ended in 1972. Asher and Montgomery were divorced in 1973.
Spiro Agnew, Republican of Maryland, was inaugurated for a second term as Vice President of the United States in January 1973, and resigned in October of that year after pleading no contest on a bribery charge.
The state song of Maryland uses the same tune as “O Tannenbaum” (i.e., "Oh, Christmas Tree).
“Oh Maryland My Maryland” begins with the line “The despot’s heel is on thy shore, Maryland, My Maryland”. The despot refers to the U.S. government in general and Abraham Lincoln in particular as it was a song written by Confederate sympathizers in 1861; it’s (rarely sung) full lyrics also include"Huzza! she spurns the Northern scum!" and “She meets her sisters on the plain/“Sic semper!” 'tis the proud refrain”, a reference to her alliance with Virginia in the war and another jab at Lincoln being a tyrant.
(Many have suggested the lyrics be rewritten if it is to remain the state song; “She puts the lotion on her skin/Maryland my Maryland/Or else she gets the hose again” would fit nicely to the above.)
Maryland, My Maryland also includes the line “Remember Carroll’s sacred trust,” a reference to Charles Carroll of Carrollton, who was both the only Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence and the last surviving signer. He died in 1832 at the age of 95.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland author Lewis Carroll went by a pen name; his real name was Charles Dodgson.
Real tennis is the original type of tennis from which the modern game of lawn tennis descended. Real tennis was played indoors. The tennis court oath, a pivotal episode in the French Revolution, occurred on a real tennis court.
Former tennis champion Bobby Riggs claimed that women’s tennis was an inferior game and challenged top-ranked women players to a match. His challenege was first accepted by Margaret Court, who Riggs beat in straight sets. Four months later Billie Jean King faced Riggs in the much-hyped “Battle of the Sexes” and beat him.
In its early years, the Supreme Court of the United States did not issue enough decisions to fill an entire volume, so its cases were printed along with those of the Pennsylvania courts.